Welcome to the ECOCITY 2022 Interactive Programme

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According to a Vancouver-based study*, only 40% of a city’s footprint can be directly influenced by government policy. The rest requires active citizen participation. Local governments are seeking meaningful ways to engage their citizenry—how can we bridge the gap between climate policy and individual action?

Lighter Footprint App (LFA)

The LFA is a tool conceived to help BC residents understand and lower their footprints (lighterfootprint.org). In undertaking user experience research for the LFA, we’ve uncovered several findings (summary below). We feel these may be of interest to Ecocity Summit delegates, whose projects may benefit from more impactful climate communication and increased citizen engagement.

Summary

1. Co-Benefits and Positive Framing
- The importance of highlighting the co-benefits of climate action and policy
- A ‘Loss’ vs. ‘Gain’ mindset—how to frame climate action and policy to increase adoption

2. Climate Literacy
- Common areas of misunderstanding among self-described environmentally-savvy citizens
- The building blocks of climate literacy

3. Individual vs. Systems Change
- Balancing individual action and systems change
- Capturing citizen barriers to climate action

4. Social Engagement
- How social support and group dynamics affect climate action adoption (results of comparative study to be undertaken over the next 3 months by Maia Schnorr von Carolsfeld, University of Edinburgh)

Background

The LFA uses local data from 5 BC municipalities to give users a localized carbon and ecological footprint. App users then select the climate actions they’d like to adopt and track their progress over time. Each participating BC municipality underwent an ecocity analysis with the help of Dr. Jennie Moore’s ecoCity Footprint Tool, (www.ecocityfootprint.org) the results of which were used in the LFA. The LFA team presented the first version of the app at the 2019 Ecocity Summit in Vancouver, Canada.

*Moore, Jennie. 2013. Getting Serious About Sustainability: exploring the potential for one-planet living in Vancouver. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia. Doi: 10.14288/1.0074187. Available online: https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0074187.

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In December of 1991, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) sparked a growing interest in children’s participation. This convention defined a child as any human being below the age of eighteen years and—through guaranteeing children the right to express their own views in matters in which they are affected—secured their right to participate in community processes. Children's participation supports a number of educational and empowerment objectives, from citizenship awareness and advocacy, to social and civic studies, while exposing them to a wide range of people and ideas. Their participation also benefits other members of the community by helping overcome the misperceptions and mistrust that often exist between generations and by building a stronger sense of community and pride of place. Despite the outcome of the UNCRC and the known benefits of children's participation, they remain a disenfranchised, powerless group who are neglected in planning practice and research. Fifty years after Sherry Arnstein asked, “What is citizen participation?”, questions remain regarding the participation of children. What constitutes genuine participation—and not tokenism—and how can planners design authentic participatory projects to engage them? We seek answers to this question through reflecting on a pilot collaborative effort which sought to engage children in the 2045 Oahu Regional Transportation Plan. Our paper reflects on the engagement, highlighting lessons learned when doing public participation with this age group. We find that by merging deliberative planning and pedagogy, planners can bring this marginalized stakeholder group to the table and lay the foundation for meaningful, intergenerational dialog about our collective future.

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Eco-city development requires alignment on a range of intersecting issues and concerns. The current global discussion on local sustainability solutions, as well as the adoption of UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 on human settlements, demonstrates the significance of eco-city development at the local level. Recognition of the effectiveness of community-level sustainability in localizing the SDGs has now brought this to the foreground.

A sole focus on economic metrics distorts resource allocation decisions, leading to underinvestment in public goods that are framed as costs rather than long-term well-being investments. Economic metrics also overlook social justice measures, such as gender pay equity, diversity in political representation, and racial equity.

To remedy these blind spots, it is essential to use a metrics framework that includes multiple forms of capital. A multiple capitals approach offers a locally attuned solution that balances private and public values and goals, such as affordable housing, energy efficiency, health, education, economic prosperity, and reduced inequality. Regardless of scale, fundamental challenges of community well-being metrics include: 1) avoiding false trade-offs, and 2) finding “sweet spots” where single interventions can have multiple co-benefits.

While several such multiple-capital frameworks and standards are in development, including the International Ecocity Framework and Standards, for the most part they have not kept up with recent changes in big data visualization now commonly available through platforms such as ESRI’s StoryMaps.

This presentation focuses on our attempts over several years to create such a tool for performance assessment and decision-support. The Community Capital Tool (CCT) is conceptually rooted in a community capital framework that considers the effects of community strategies, policies, projects and investments on six mutually-reinforcing forms of capital (human, natural, physical, economic, cultural, and social). The CCT allows communities to a) leverage community assets to promote change, b) holistically assess progress toward sustainability goals, c) align plans, policies, and projects reflecting multiple priorities, and d) increase access and transparency through a common platform. We will illustrate these concepts with examples from using the tool in Canadian and US cities.

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Abstract: Mobilising Digital Enablers for Citizen
Engagement in Urban Regeneration

Authors: Ingrid Andersson^[1], Thomas Andersson¹, Emma Björner^[2]

The rise of the smart city has come to signify the application of ICT and digitalisation in urban regeneration, spanning utilities, the workplace, social life, and so forth. The strong attention and large resources devoted to the smart city are, however, paralleled by hurdles and setbacks emanating from, e.g., the influence of narrow expertise and/or vested interests. A voluminous literature has considered issues in identifying and meeting with citizens’ needs, and/or lacking requirements for achieving relevance in addressing fundamental challenges in urban development, such as under-representation by disadvantaged groups, fragmentation, and polarisation. During the recent on-set of COVID-19, increased benefits of digital communication blend with new concerns and drawbacks, such as fatigue, risk of conformity, and

mismatch between technical requirements and user skills.

Observing limitations in the mainstream approach, conceptually as well as practically, the paper revisits the rationale for mobilising ‘digital enablers’. It distinguishes four building blocks, namely purpose, method, content, and tools. Further drawing on the URBiNAT project, featuring an ongoing parallel mapping and practical application of digital enablers in shaping constructive “Communities-of-Interest” in interlinked cities, it explores the prerequisites for digital enablers to leverage citizen engagement and genuine participation in urban regeneration. Extending from there, it considers ways forward to draw on the diverse strengths of digital enablers, with synergies between inclusion, relevant targeting tailored to the local context, and the realization of aggregate benefits from inter-linkages such as those associated with Healthy Corridors. It concludes by setting out directions for next stage operationalisation of digital enablers in support of more effective learning processes and practical lessons of high general validity.

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We know that to truly address the climate crisis, the greatest changes need to happen in our towns and cities. The majority of people now live in towns and cities, and they will soon account for ¾ of our energy use and green house gas emissions.

Bioregional has been working with delivery partners in five towns and cities across the world as part of a grant funded programme. In each region, communities have created sustainability action plans and collaborations – helping them move towards a greener, healthier future, where everyone enjoys a good quality of life. Across the programme, 105 people have been trained as One Planet Integrators, and over 100 action plans have been created.

Additionally, ecological and carbon footprints were calculated in four of the regions, acting as a baseline from which to identify key areas for concerted action.

Our programme has brought together local authorities, businesses, schools and community groups in Canada, Denmark, South Africa, Russia and the UK to make their towns and cities better places to live.

These organisations have developed action plans and partnerships to help their region become more sustainable. The process has been led in each location by an 'on-the-ground' lead partner.

Bioregional’s One Planet Living framework is used to structure the plans. These ten simple principles – from health and happiness and sustainable food to zero carbon energy – provide a common language to talk about sustainability and to drive change.

Through our work across the 5 towns and cities, we have developed a clear collaborative process for driving sustainability action in a region that is based around the co-creation of shared vision and development of action plans.

The programme has created an international network of knowledge-sharing designed to accelerate change towards happy and prosperous lives for all within the limits of our one planet.

We’re now looking to expand our programme and are inviting more towns and cities to join our network.

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A core insight of regenerative development theory is the idea that we can shift from dominance to intimacy with the entity of place. This depends on knowing the ‘place’ on the level of relationship and experience. At the onset, this paper adopts a perspective of gender mainstreaming as a process-oriented approach to safeguard women’s perspectives and everyday life experiences in all urban planning processes from master planning and land use codes to placemaking interventions and soft measures. It also defines woman as a person who identifies as female, and within the spectrum of the gender identity of woman. Finally, it adopts a conceptual living-systems metabolic approach of regeneration endeavouring to turn cities into environmentally benign organisms by actualising circular processes and promoting sustainable trajectories. This paper explores how innovative ways of mapping both the presence and the agency of contemporary women in cities may support the emergence of emancipatory placemaking perspectives and previously unrecorded narratives. It starts by proposing ‘presency’ as a new concept, merging the meaning of presence, as a mindful way of paying attention to life; and agency, as a critical awareness of the context and capacity to act. It examines the revisited role of women in their mediation of space and making of place including efforts to forge a new framework of regenerative urban development. It proposes different mapping approaches to capture a mosaic of regenerative practices led by women addressing how cities of present and future can be green and inclusive. It concludes by suggesting that it is in the experience and practice of the city that we have the best chance of making a just world.